World Ships: Feasibility and Rationale [pdf]
zenodo.org
zenodo.org
All of sci-fi is steeped in interstellar transportation of human bodies, each with human brains and human biological needs and handicaps. I just don't get it.
There's no forcing function to make us go to the stars, establish permanent habitats on Mars, etc. They're not very hospitable or profitable enterprises.
I see us evolving human biology before we attempt this seriously. Genetically modified bodies that have different metabolisms, different mechanical gaits, changed oxygen metabolism.
Or perhaps we'll have brain uploads, and exist ephemerally. Living matter isn't ideal in outer space. We can always turn on biology again when we reach the destination - if we even want to.
Or maybe AGI just kills us.
In any case, I don't see human forms doing any of this nonsense. I think people fantasize about the familiar things they can relate to. I see a fundamental mismatch between the human body and outer space that would be served by optimizing humans for the environment.
One would think the frailty of human life on this world would be top of mind right now, what with the once-in-a-century pandemic we're living through.
I think the consensus is we generally "know" what to do to figure out a way out of this rock (so not necessarily interstellar travel), whereas modifying our biology seems magical in comparison.
Living outside of Earth, in a different gravity well, with different doses of radiation and likely in confined spaces is challenging, but at least you can put those things into comprehensible words. I wouldn't even know where to begin describing how we'd modify our biological construct, as you put it.
We don't generally make our own genes yet, just break ones we don't want or transfer ones we do want, but if the human race decided to allow it, we could certainly make a good start on improving the body for handling non-Earth conditions.
Bruce Sterling pointed out that colonizing the Gobi desert should be far easier than colonizing Mars.
Set up 100s of these around the world. Worried about a pandemic? Set up testing and quarantine policies for everything and everyone which comes in and out. Seal each site, and stagger any openings to reduce the chance of infection.
Once we know how to set those up in the desert, and Antarctica, and underground, we'll be in a much better place for colonizing off-planet.
I think it's odd that most of the people who argue the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" point, end up with "make rockets!", not "make self-contained ecosystems!"
Absolutely not.
>I think it's odd that most of the people who argue the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" point, end up with "make rockets!", not "make self-contained ecosystems!"
Putting aside classes of events which scour life from the planet (gamma ray burst, being hit by a really huge asteroid, etc. - admittedly having an incrediblby small chance of occuring, but utterly devastating if they do) where the only mitigation is to disperse your eggs amongst a number of stellar baskets, you still have a number of problems.
To maintain your isolated ecosystem (and they have to be totally isolated for the argument to work, otherwise it's just a remote community e.g. remote Alaska) you have to be able to maintain your civilisational tech level. If you have to be able to sustain yourself, that means every industrial process your civilisation can achieve must be reproducible inside your isolated community. Not only do you have to be able to acquire raw materials in bulk (or make it yourself at incredible cost of energy [1]), you have to have the industrial machinery to produce it along with all intermediate products. And on top of all that, you have to have people who understand the processes involved at every level. No single person can understand that much or even groups less than thousands or tens of thousands eople, from the low level physics, to metallurgy, wire drawing, PCB construction, architecture, various fields of engineering, electronics specialties, agriculture and farming, etc.
No one person alive could make a modern computer from scratch, or even something relatively simple like a (modern) solar cell. You might be able to produce tech up to around WW1 era with some difficulty, or even WW2 if you had a largeish population, but something like building a computer processor using a 14nm fabrication process would be impossible. Even building simple engines for cars would still be useless unless you have the ability to produce engine oil, fuel, lubricants, and so on. People do build wire wrap computers and other curiosities by hand, but that's still relying on civilisation to provide materials and knowledge. And this is just trying to fight off entropy, making no consideration for doing useful research and creating new technologies. Unless you handwave in scifi tech like nanobots that can mine, produce, and repair things for you, the only way to be truly self-sufficient is to occupy a massive footprint of land (continent size or larger depending on raw resource availability), have a massive industrial capacity, and a massive population to not only run all of this but also to educate and perpetuate - so you don't set it all up and then end up losing all your tech in a few generations because no-one understands it.
This is getting rather long winded so I'll stop, but my point is that if you're going to go to all the effort of setting up a Redundant Array of Independent Civilisations, you might as well do it properly and send them to another world where they won't be at risk. Nothing else could justify the expenditure. Not to mention not having to worry about borders, mining rights, mineral depletion, raiders who want to take your stuff for themselves, sabotage, etc.
What's riskier, setting up a colony on Mars with untested ecosystem technology, or testing the technology here on Earth first?
> Nothing else could justify the expenditure
What justifies the expenditure of putting a self-sustaining colony on Mars?
We have oil platforms in the ocean. People live/work there for a few months, then cycle back. That model is much more likely to work for Mars, if the expenditure is justified in terms of revenue extraction.
If the justification is to save humanity from a large number of possible extinction-level events, then some of those can be averted by having on-Earth isolated ecosystems.
The technology is fine though, we already have every kind of industry on earth... on earth.
>What justifies the expenditure of putting a self-sustaining colony on Mars?
The self-sustaining part is the expensive part, not the space part. Want to build modern processors? just the fab facility is ballpark $20 to 25 billion USD (using TSMC's future fab as a cost estimate), not counting any of the rest of the supply chain or ongoing operations cost. And that's just one type of factory.
At least off-planet there's unclaimed territory with resources to exploit, a truly independent node on earth would not be compatible with existing borders and mineral rights.
>We have oil platforms in the ocean. People live/work there for a few months, then cycle back
These are not self-sufficient though - you might be able to live on it in isolation via fishing and some kind of evaporation still to get drinking water, but if cut off from civilisation you would not be able to maintain oil drilling operations for more than (my guesstimate) a couple of weeks, maybe a month. You'd run out of lubricant or fuel very quickly. Not to mention civilisation would regress e.g. you simply can't have any significant manufacturing / agriculture / medical facility / etc. on board - to be truly independent would require a footprint the size of multiple cities.
>If the justification is to save humanity from a large number of possible extinction-level events, then some of those can be averted by having on-Earth isolated ecosystems.
It seems very unlikely that any disaster sufficient to wipe out all of humanity would spare these independent nodes. Even events like plague that would theoretically leave the node untouched (assuming they go hermetic soon enough) are likely to lead to the nodes destruction when the surrounding nation-states dissolve into chaos, or some other unforeseen consequence. Meanwhile the closest possible approach to mars is ~39 days, if there was a plague then that is plenty of time for incubation and symptoms to show.
I don't know where you're going with "industry." I was talking about ecosystem technology to allow a self-sufficient colony.
We don't have that at all on Earth, other than Earth itself.
So no, we don't have an industry which can build self-contained ecosystems.
> These are not self-sufficient though
My example was to question what "justify the expenditure" meant.
If the justification is "prevent humanity from Earth-only calamities" then the same justification can be used to develop those technologies on Earth first, in order to
And don't say that Argentina wouldn't like to have a self-supporting Esperanza Base (which should be cheaper as only food and power need to be self-supporting, not air or water), instead o f subsidizing their colonization effort in Antarctica. That is, there are intermediate stages which are wanted here on Earth.
> you simply can't have any significant manufacturing / agriculture / medical facility / etc. on board - to be truly independent would require a footprint the size of multiple cities
Which was part of the point of my objection to this paper about worldships, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23210515 .
> It seems very unlikely ..
It seems very unlikely that we would ever set up a colony which was sufficiently isolated from the Earth that it would be able to survive an Earth-only extinction event.
Unless it became a matter of religion, there will almost certainly be interconnections, resulting in a single cultural ecosystem. (Because we don't have an economic system which cares about long term species survival.)
Eg, there will only be a few facilities on Earth which produce the quantum neurons needed for the fusion reactors on Mars.
> if there was a plague then that is plenty of time for incubation and symptoms to show.
That's a supposition. The Super-AIDS pandemic of 2103 will have a incubation period of 15 months, with a morality of 95% before a viable phage therapy was developed.
Only the isolated hermitages on Earth survive intact, with the organizational structure to guide reconstruction.
It's not hard to come up with more scenarios - I've read a lot of SF. (Consider the apert schedule of the concents in "Anathem", though they were not ecologically isolated.)
Cars don't need to be so comfortable, phones don't really need desktop grade hardware, food doesn't need to be so elaborately made, we don't need to travel to locations just to see it in person, and so on.
As such, as inefficient as it may be, people will put their bodies on other planets.
Also AGI, if it truly is intelligent, will not kill us. It is way more efficient to use humans and other animals as workforce. As good as its hardware may get, it is really hard to compete with the efficiency, versatility and durability of a human body, especially if it is enhanced.
We are currently residing on a better "Worldship" than we could ever engineer, and we've been knowingly destroying our life support systems in the face of ever-growing warnings from scientists. Ignoring the other planetary crises we face - biodiversity and ecosystem collapse - our continued existence on our planet depends on somehow sucking billions of tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it somewhere, somehow, forever. This is trivial compared to colonies in our solar system, much less interstellar travel.
Ignoring the question of technological and engineering feasibility I propose the hypothetical World Ship Thought Exercise ( 100,000 people (on average), 10k year journey, each individual lives around 100 years). How would the population be structured? Would it be democratic? How would crime be dealt with? How would people decide who does what? Would there be castes? An underclass? Would there be rationing? Could there be homeless? What about birth control? What if a portion of the population simply didn't want to have kids or didn't have enough to replace the population? How would religion be dealt with? Would, could and/or should a 10k long civilization remain static?
> Settlers in Iceland are thought to number ~8,000 to 16,000 individuals, with the population rarely exceeding 50,000 until 1850 (3), after which there was a rapid expansion to its current size of 330,000.
An interesting scenario would be the emergence of considerably faster travel after sending these ships. There could be ships catching up and even beating the old world ships to their destination.
World ships are sent, in the interim time-bendiness of the universe (100 years on Earth an 5 years aboard ship) FTL travel is developed and the occupants of the world ships are rescued and repatriated.
No clue who wrote the book.
Thank you!
And so far demonstrated that it's not feasible.
> It can be seen that regarding biological feasibility, in particular genetics, population sizes in the 10^3 - 10^4 range are required
There is no mention of education. The assumption is that neolithic villages are a good model, but neolithic villagers didn't operate an interstellar ship.
Do all children in the ship need the equivalent of, say, a high school education? If so, the time needed to educate them takes away from time needed to raise food, manage sewage treatment systems, etc.
In Biosphere-2, the staff spent all their time on the biosphere, with no spare time for raising and educating children.